Burning Bright
by Mercalia
Summary: Lady Sybil's in trouble and, for once, no one can blame Branson. Not that Branson is resting easy, and restless wakefulness lends itself to thinking. Set between S1 and S2. Early Sybil/Branson.


It's not seven months after the garden party that Lady Sybil is invited to stay with relatives (too distant to have inherited before Matthew), and, of a sudden, Branson's life becomes dull.

That's not true – there was always a certain, if comfortable, blandness about life around Downton Abbey. He was never really one for comfort or predictability, regarding the slow-rolling stretch of time as something like the painful wait for a fuse to burn down. Lady Sybil, he had to own, gave shape, excitement and purpose to his days.

It wasn't an easy truth to admit, even to himself. But he was an honest man, and Lady Sybil had begun to burrow into his heart.

He'd liked her from the first, of course. She was curious and political, and he didn't have that far back down a rocky road of memories to go to remember something kin in himself. As his cousins had for him, with their papers and their fiery ideas, he wanted to reach out to her, and show her the course. Like leading a lamb off the path to slaughter, in a way. Over the months, with conversations caught quickly on the country lanes of Yorkshire, he'd paid forward the lessons that had been given him. She had Prometheus's fire burning in her heart – the passion that changed the fate of men. Only a fool would leave it to be snuffed. Branson may not have been a wise man, but he kindled it.

* * *

><p>"Knowledge is an odd thing," she had said one day, from the back of the Renault, a few volumes stacked in her lap from the bookstore in Ripon.<p>

There was something in the cant of her voice – and the quirk of her lips, as he glanced up in the mirror – that qualified the statement and left it hanging like a question.

"That's so. But what do you mean by it?"

"I had a governess for years. She taught my sisters and me a great deal, but nothing terribly important. It's not as though my drawing-room French is going to be of deathly significance."

"Can't hurt you," he responded, thinking of the tongue-lashings he'd gotten for his few muttered Gaelic curses.

"But just think, Branson! That's time I could have spent on more worthwhile things. I could have learned the workings of Parliament instead of memorizing the Kings and Queens. I certainly shan't get the right to vote by knowing the difference between William Rufus and the Sailor King. What's more, could I even make good use of it?"

His eyes were on the road, he couldn't face her, but he'd had enough time with her to know exactly what she looked like– face flushed and eyes sparkling, flooded with spirit. She'd be leaning forward in the seat, ready to leap. The thought made him grin like a fool.

"Someone saw to your education, at least."

"A certain kind of education," she conceded, "But not a real one. Not the kind that affects the world. That's another thing, I suppose, that fine ladies have in common with ordinary people."

"Milady, the only thing that separates ladies and lords from the rest are the titles. We're born the same."

Her laugh was bright: "So says the man who just called me 'milady'."

Sparing a glance over his shoulder, he saw her mischievous smile, her blue eyes alight with that inner fire. He laughed, more than a little drunk on her joy.

"Oh, Branson, how are you going to be a socialist if you're going to keep treating me as a superior?"

"You're too much for me."

"I hope not," she replied, innocently meeting his quick look in the mirror. He wondered if she knew how easily her words could be mistaken for flirtation.

So it was that, a week and some days later, he watched the train pull away from Downton with a pang in his heart, buoyed by the promise that she should be back in a little over a week.

* * *

><p>She has been gone for six days, and Branson's already a little feverish.<p>

It's not all her absence, of course. He's nursing a cup of strong black tea and glaring at the evening paper, hardly able to process anything but the senselessness of the War. His temper is up, angry at a world where thousands of good men (it has been a matter of months!) are sacrificed to the vanity of doddering, inbred monarchs.

If she were here, they'd open the papers and talk about this rally or the likelihood of that measure being passed – about anything, really. But now he's stuck in a quiet room where, even if he gets to stand up and speak out, he's paid less heed than the ringing of one of the bells.

Tom Branson's not really one for literature, but he knows irony when he sees it.

Three days, he tells himself. Why should a week be so long, when he has not seen Ireland for a year and more?

The answer is obvious, of course. It's been staring at him in the face since August last, but he's been too stubborn to truly own it. He has to believe the time is moving like molasses for her as well, at least in the long autumn evenings.

* * *

><p>Two days later, Branson begs a meal from Mrs. Patmore, and pushes his way into the crowded servants table. They discuss the times and the war, because the weather has been consistently good, and Mrs. Patmore's cooking has always been satisfying. If Downton is an endless parade of uniform days, at least here is a hearth-fire at which he can keep warm.<p>

Carson, the great bear of a man, rumbles into the servants' mess a long while after they've supped. His face is dark, and as everyone halts and looks to him, they steel themselves for either a verbal whipping or a blow.

"It pains me to announce His Lordship has just received ill news," he begins, glancing around at each of the work-worn faces, all slightly relieved that there has been no fault, no mistake. But then he continues, "An accident has befallen Lady Sybil."

"What?"

"How serious?"

A tumult of whens and hows and what-happeneds pour forth – William's chair is shoved abruptly back, Lily's teacup clatters off its saucer. But he says nothing and does nothing; Branson's temporarily struck cold and dumb.

"The car she and her companions were travelling in was run off the road. I'm afraid it is quite serious. Branson," Carson directs, fixing him with a pointed stare, "You will take His Lordship and her Ladyship to the train directly."

"Of course."

He mutters curses and prayers, under his breath, in a torrent of English and Gaelic - beseeching the Allmighty and castigating the driver who has been careless with so precious a burden.

Mrs. Hughes glances at him with a knowing sort of sympathy, reminding him that he has not been careful.

* * *

><p>He sees Lord and Lady Grantham off, watching the train disappear.<p>

When he returns to Downton, the lights upstairs and down are full ablaze and feverishly fretful. He has no watch, for which he is thankful, because staring at the hours would only make the wakeful night longer.

For a time he works, washing and polishing, cleaning the dirt out of the tires and making all the little adjustments that differentiate between a functional motorcar and a masterpiece. In the numbingly familiar movements and actions, the bleak news settles, phrased in comprehensible snippets and sentences.

The motorcar went off the road. The fool driver was going too fast in a slick winter rain, and he overturned in the ditch.

It's Ripon all over again, but infinitely worse.

Has he heard her for the last time? He can't have. There's a war on, but young ladies – women – like Lady Sybil cannot be casualties – he cannot have heard her voice for the last time. Branson thinks back to their parting at the station, standing by the Renault. It was a fine morning, and she laughed and laughed when he asked (impertinently) if she would be wearing her trousers to a dinner.

"My father would never forgive me for making a fool of the family," she'd said, adding sheepishly "I left your book of Mills's essays on the backseat here – I ought to have returned it earlier, but I just finished as you were seeing to my cases."

"What'll you have for the journey, then? Would you like the morning news?"

"Have you finished it?"

"Yes, milady," he said, handing the bundled paper to her, though, in truth, he'd not gotten more than a few articles in.

"Branson, you're a terrible liar," she laughed, "The print's not been smudged, and you've never ironed a paper to fix the ink on it."

"I've no time to idle when I return to Downton. You take it, Lady Sybil, I insist. I'll find something for the evening. And you shall have to tell me about it when you return."

Branson cannot think that she might actually be gone. He gives up polishing, and goes to pacing, picking up and putting down the familiar tome of Mills's essays whenever he passes the bench.

Sometime before dawn, he finally collapses into a chair, and steals a few uneasy hours of rest from his worries.

* * *

><p>He brews himself a strong pot of tea, the next morning, and opens whatever book first falls under his hand. Perhaps the Abbey has news; perhaps it doesn't. He cannot allow himself to fret like that – behaving like the lovelorn hero from some sentimental penny-dreadful. He's got sense enough in his thick Irish skull to know that running around, wailing and banging his head into trees is not going to solve anyone's problems.<p>

Eventually, William appears, and reports that Lady Mary wishes to go into Moulton, for something or other.

"Is there any news? Of Lady Sybil?" he manages to ask.

William shakes his head and shrugs. "You'll know when the rest of us do."

Branson snatches his jacket and cap, tugging his thick gloves on with not a little savageness. It's impertinent, but he'll ask Lady Mary. Perhaps she'll see it as an extension of his worry from the Count those long months ago, as opposed to what it really is.

* * *

><p>There is word from His Lordship, but only that Lady Sybil is still unconscious. Her ribs are cracked and bruised. She lives, but so tenuously that the doctors will not predict the next twelve hours. The ever hopeful prognosis: if she pulls through until then, she'll survive.<p>

As night falls, he resigns himself to another long night of restlessness (whatever small embers of relief he has from her continued existence) though he can feel himself fading at the corners. He told himself he wouldn't take to the drink, but the bottom of a whiskey bottle is starting to look a damn sight more comfortable than his bed.

* * *

><p>He doesn't leave the garage the next day. No one orders the motorcar; no one so much as darkens his door.<p>

After long hours of nothing but fretting and pacing and motorcar maintenance, interspersed with brief periods of focus (during which he wolfs through swaths of the York London papers) he settles down to meager bread and cheese with cold black tea. On second thought (and considering it's been the two longest days of his life) he digs out the dusty bottle which he has branded as only for emergencies, and unceremoniously doctors the teapot.

The hard liquor burns its way down his throat; it settles like a hot stone in his stomach. Whiskey numbs the ache that's built for the past days, but Branson knows his behavior has been and is absurd. He's been – if not as bad as a fool – very stupid. He's gone beyond being merely infatuated with Lady Sybil, and he's certainly passing the stage of looking at her as he did the girls he walked out with, in his not-far-gone school days.

He was a strange sort of anxious when she left for a less than a fortnight away, missing the warmth of her character and the fire in her spirit. In the twenty-one months he's been at Downton, she's taken the edge off his solitude – he doesn't much think of his family and friends, when they're talking over the papers or sneaking away to a rally. Only that, in his idle dreams, he's beginning to wonder how she would like Dublin.

If someday, she would –

He's a fool. A damn fool. Lady Sybil is unattainable as the sun at its zenith. She'd held his hand and smiled at him, she'd befriended him and sought him out, but the world would have to shift on its axis before Tom Branson could ever show her his home.

_Some socialist you're turning out to be, falling in love with an Earl's daughter_, he berates himself, gulping down the potent mixture in the teacup.

But all of that seems irrelevant, because Lady Sybil could be dead.

* * *

><p>He finds William on his doorstep, just after first light.<p>

"Mrs. Hughes sent me," he says quickly, as soon as Branson comes to the door, "Her Ladyship telephoned not fifteen minutes ago. Lady Sybil's come to in the night – she's conscious and she has all her wits. She's weak, but she's going to be all right, the doctors said."

Branson feels his knees begin to buckle, and he quickly grips the lintel to stay upright. "Thank God," he breathes.

"They say she can't be moved for some time, but they expect she'll be as good as new, inside a month. Poor Lady Sybil. Mrs. Hughes said something sort of funny afterwards," William adds as he's leaving, turning to head for the house, "I'm not sure she meant me to hear it."

"What's that?"

"Only that she's sure you'll have learned to be more careful, driving Lady Sybil."

The second footman disappears up the path to the house, not a little perplexed by the tide of relief that he saw in the chauffer's face. But William doesn't have a harsh or worldly bone in his body, and doesn't deduce what others might have found suspicious.

For his part, Branson's sure he's incapable of Mrs. Hughes's prescribed caution, no matter how impeccable his driving.

But for now, it's enough that he'll be seeing Lady Sybil again.

* * *

><p>He drives a decidedly careworn Lord Grantham home from the station the next morning and things begin to return to normal.<p>

His nights and days are his own again, though he anxiously awaiting the date of her return. Branson returns, uneasily at first, to his papers and his politics, the old fires that drove him for so long. But the worry about her health has subsided enough only to allow another disquiet to surface. He's in love with her.

At least, he thinks, reflecting on his time at Downton, it's not exactly a surprising revelation.

He's the worst kind of fool – one in love – and it's already starting to affect him. If he had any kind of sense, he would hand in his notice and leave – find another posting somewhere or go back to Dublin – and go on with his life. Unfortunately, as he owns to himself – standing by to drive the Dowager Countess to dinner, or Edith to the dressmaker's, or visitors up from town – he's never been accused of having a surfeit of good sense. Just ideas and fire.

What will happen to Lady Sybil? Who'd be her conspirator? She's a clever young woman, she'd figure out how to smuggle in papers and pamphlets, how to circumvent another chauffeur and the servants to attend meetings; all that can be done on her own. There's something more to their camaraderie, though.

It may be presumption on his part, but they are friends and allies, and each at least partially reliant on the other – one to stoke fires, and the other to tamp them down. The symmetry of it fits.

In the end, Branson never seriously considers leaving. His reasons are not entirely selfish, at least, and his heart's in the entirely unsuitable right place.

* * *

><p>Two and a half weeks have gone by since the accident, and it is the day that Lady Sybil is set to return to Downton.<p>

Branson stays with the car, and watches as her and her mother slowly and painfully alight from the train. He does not doubt the journey was long and arduously painful, for Lady Sybil is pale, and shakes like the barley in the wind.

For propriety's sake, he cannot rush to her side, and his unfathomable relief at seeing her return robs him of his speech. For all that the last two and a half weeks of his life have been a nightmare of worry, from which he had been awoken, he can only look pleased and smile respectfully, and help her up into the car.

She holds his hand longer than strictly called for. Branson would swear he could catch the familiar aroma of violets and lavender.

* * *

><p>Two weeks after her return to Downton, he was charged with taking Lady Sybil to a charity meeting in Ripon. The Countess, still visited by the specter of losing her youngest girl, ordered him to take special care. She needn't have worried, really.<p>

Lady Sybil gives him the ghost of a pleased grin, when she meets him in front of the Abbey, her looks still a little pale.

"Branson," she says, after they've passed the main gate, "Will you please take us by the Westings's farm?"

"If you've some business there, Milady, might I suggest it wait until after your committee? I fear we won't make it in time otherwise."

"I've no business with the Westings, and I won't be late," she responds, a little of her old, determined mischief creeping into her voice, "The meeting's tomorrow afternoon."

He returns in kind. "You'll not be expecting me to drive you until then, I hope?" No matter how much he's willing to do so.

Lady Sybil laughs, "I couldn't do that to you, Branson. Just drive out towards Ripon and back."

"And when you get back? To the Abbey?"

"I shall make up some nonsense about having written the date down wrong," she says resolutely, but softens, "I hate to lie to Mama, but I couldn't stand to be looked after any longer."

"I understand."

"I knew you would."

"And I won't breathe a word of it."

They lapse into silence, and he longs to say something – something that says _I'm in love with you_ at the same time it does not. He swallows about a hundred comments, running the gamut from inane to incendiary, and settles for a hastily spoken and poorly phrased truth, which somehow seems to incorporate both poles.

"I'm glad you're recovering. That you're back in Downton."

"Thank you, Branson," she says, much more than a simple acknowledgement, and continues, "I missed our talks a great deal, this last month, you know."

In the mirror, he can just see her bright eyes and her smile, and he remembers every waking moment of worry he had. He's a lost man, he knows, but as long as he can live by the light of her fire, he doesn't care.


End file.
